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Elena Sánchez founding member of the ecology group
Las Teresitas: a case of David versus Goliath?Apparently contradictory rulings by two different courts in recent weeks have shown just how complex the controversial Las Teresitas land deal case has become.
Readers who have been following our coverage over the past year or so will be familiar with the background to the case but to clarify the situation further we contacted Elena Sánchez, the 39-year-old law lecturer who is a founding member of the ecology group that brought the Las Teresitas case to the attention of the courts. Elena and her colleagues at the ‘El Rincón’ association are pleased that Spain’s Supreme Court has sided with them as regards the irregularities committed in Las Teresitas, but she warns that the battle may not be over just yet.
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 | | Elena Sánchez a founding member of the ecology group El Rincón |
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Santa Cruz - 11.12.2007 - Island Connections: What is Las Teresitas all about? Most people know the name of the picturesque beach outside Santa Cruz, which was made originally using sand from the Saharan desert, but they might not know why it is fuelling so much media coverage at present.
Elena Sánchez: Las Teresitas is probably the biggest - and now, thanks to the media spotlight, the best-known - corruption case in the Canaries. It essentially boils down to the city council paying an exorbitant price for land in and around the beach which had been earmarked for a development project. To understand the case we need to go back to the early 1960s when the first plans were prepared to turn the small beach into a major tourist development, at a time when mass tourism was beginning to arrive in Tenerife. The plans were blocked due to the opposition of locals in San Andrés, the fishing village next to Las Teresitas, but the hold-up did not stop some people and so-called official bodies from initiating rather shady manoeuvres to buy up or simply take over land in the area, in the expectation that it would increase in value once the project was eventually approved. Which is what has happened. What used to be worth under four euros a square metre 38 years ago is now worth almost 200 euros.
IC: It seems difficult to imagine that a case from the 1960s should still be making the headlines and causing such a political stir, which might even result in the current mayor appearing in court on corruption charges. What has happened since then?
ES: To cut a long story short, the development plans were never shelved definitively. They were always simmering under the surface and in the late 90s they resurfaced. Once again local opposition was a problem, which had to be settled in the courts. The ‘interesting’ aspect -for want of a better word- is that literally 48 hours before the court ruling allowing the development to go ahead, vast amounts of land were bought up by a company -Inversiones Las Teresitas - which appears to have been set up specifically for that purpose by two very well-known developers, with good political connections.
They took out a giant loan to pay the estimated eight billion of the old pesetas needed to buy the different plots of land. The loan was arranged in record time - as little as one day - by the Cajacanarias bank, which had a connection with one of the developers. What everyone wanted to know was how the two developers knew the green light was going to be given and how they managed to raise money so quickly.
IC: So what have the activities of property developers got to do with Santa Cruz council and the mayor Miguel Zerolo?
ES: A lot, believe me. Due to changes in planning legislation, a large part of the seafront could no longer be developed. In any case, in July 2001 the council decided to buy 60 per cent of the original land acquired by Inversiones Las Teresitas in 1998 to prevent any future possibility of hotels and apartment blocks being built there. The council paid a staggering 8.7 million euros for the land, which we felt was a shocking price. A lot of strange things occurred at the time in terms of the valuations used to calculate the price and there was no public information given on this operation. By the time it was announced, everything had been cut and dried. Our association launched legal action because we believed that a deal had been done which was detrimental to the interests of the people of Santa Cruz.
Not only did the company make a financial killing in just three years, it was also given permission by the Ccuncil to build many more luxury properties on the 40 per cent it retained for itself. So it was a double windfall. When the developers realised that this was turning into a potentially massive legal case, they sold off part of the 40 per cent, again making a massive profit.
IC: What has El Rincón done in a bid to stop the deal?
ES: We challenge the legality of the buy-back operation and the courts, right up to the Supreme Court, have ruled in our favour and annulled the entire operation on the grounds that the proper procedures were not followed in setting the price. It emerged during the case that a valuation putting the price of the 60 per cent at less than half the price agreed was ignored by the council, even though it was drawn up by one of its officials. In theory Santa Cruz should get back the 8.7 million euros it paid out but the council, for some strange reason, has appealed against the rulings every time, insisting that the present circumstances make it impossible to enforce them. It even tried to have our action stopped on the grounds that we had no jurisdiction in Santa Cruz.
However, our statutes state our goals quite clearly, namely, protection of the environment, democracy and public participation throughout Tenerife and the Canaries. The deal cut by the council, led by its mayor, is a direct violation of all three. We want the land valued at its true price, bearing in mind that Spanish law considers the stretch along the coast as being public land anyway and therefore it should not have been attributed any development value whatsoever.
IC: Have any foreigners been affected by this staggering case of collusion? There have been pictures in the media of a German couple who have become quite famous in the Las Teresitas controversy.
ES: Yes, some foreigners who bought plots of land in the area around Las Teresitas decades ago looked as if they had lost everything because somehow their properties managed to end up in the hands of the developers as a result of far-from-clear operations. The German couple successfully argued in court that they received no notification of the plans to expropriate their land and judges have ordered the clock to be turned back so they can be included in the process. Our interpretation of that ruling is that it annuls everything that has happened since then and so any arrangements must be renegotiated. Although clearly the most expensive one (we have to pay our own legal costs), Las Teresitas is not the only case we are working on. El Rincón members were instrumental in securing a reversal of permission given by La Orotava planners for the demolition of the Atlante Theatre to make way for over 50 houses. It takes time and effort to fight these battles but it is a very worthwhile cause if we manage to prevent the chosen few (those with good political connections) from earning millions of euros through illegal deals. The port planned for Granadilla is a good example….
By Karl McLaughlin
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